New York is one of 2 states – North Carolina being
the other – that automatically prosecutes 16- and 17-year-olds as adults in
misdemeanor and felony cases. Other states do so only on a conditional basis at
the whim of the presiding judge.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has been adamantly opposed to
this. In his January State of the State he briefly touched on the matter:
“Our juvenile
justice laws are outdated. Under New York State law, 16 and 17 year olds can be
tried and charged as adults…It’s not right, it’s not fair – we must raise the
age. Let’s form a commission on youth public safety and justice and let’s get
it done this year.”
Just a couple of weeks later in his mass e-mail to
constituents honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., he called this a
“civil rights crisis” and said that “changing this practice has to be a
priority in the legislative session”.
So far we have yet to see a commission and it
hasn’t yet been a legislative priority, but now, with the budget rigmarole out
of the way, it will be certain to take center stage before the session
concludes in 2 months. Some of the chess pieces are already in play: Assembly
bill A.3668 and Senate bill S.1409, sponsored by Joe Lentol and Valmanette
Montgomery respectively, would raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18.
Proponents of the legislation say it is necessary
for the betterment of the youthful offenders because a kinder, gentler approach
will prevent travesties that are alleged outcomes of incarcerated teenagers.
Among those they cite are recidivism (teens will become trained, hardened
criminals when living in close quarters with adult criminals), emotional damage
(juveniles placed into solitary confinement emerge with emotional problems),
suicide (the suicide rate for juveniles in adult jails was 7.7 times higher
than for those housed in juvenile detention centers), and sexual abuse (a
juvenile offender is at greater risk of sexual abuse if he or she is the
youngest inmate on the block).
There is a little too much focus, most of it
melodramatic in nature, on the supposed plight of these lawbreakers. What about
the victims of their crimes?
There are approximately 50,000 arrests of 16 and 17
year olds in New York State annually. Think about that: 50,000 arrests. That’s
for crimes for which they were caught -- that means there are countless
multiples of those 50,000 affected by the actions of these teens who were
arrested and their peers who weren’t. We aren’t taking a trivial amount of
lawbreakers here.
Nor are the crimes themselves trivial in nature. These
young adults commit old adult crimes. They deal drugs. They burglarize homes
and businesses. They assault people. They kill.
How soon we forget the 3 teens who just 7 years ago
put the City of Niagara Falls into a frenzy when they conducted their own crime
spree for kicks, robbing 4, maybe 5, taxi drivers and shooting 2, killing one
of them in the process. Or, what about the 17-year-old who in cahoots with a
19-year-old beat a Niagara Falls man to death with a golf club in 2010, the
result of a drug deal gone bad?
Cuomo and Company would prefer to see degenerates
like those have their hands slapped, live in a juvenile detention center or be
returned to their families. None of those actions work – if they did, their
families would have prevented them from ever even considering such abhorrent behavior
in the first place.
It’s simple: If you commit adult crimes you need to
face adult penalties and adult rehabilitation. At 16 and 17 you certainly know
the boundaries between good and bad, legal and illegal. It’s been drilled into
your mind by society -- family, friends, schools, television, and community –
and it’s that same society you must answer to for your transgressions.
If New York were to amend it penal code, what’s
next? Scientists and psychologists have long said that the brain’s
judgment-control and risk-assessment systems don’t fully mature until the
mid-20s. Will that one day mean that criminals shouldn’t be tried as adults
until they are 26?
Yes, it’s silly to think that, but it’s just as
ridiculous to give thugs of any age a free pass.
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